


evenings

by Eloritia



Series: Secret Shinigami Submissions [1]
Category: Death Note, Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Gen, Multiverse, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloritia/pseuds/Eloritia
Summary: Multiverse theory:A theory that there is a hypothetical set of finite and infinite possible universes, including the universe in which we live.Written for partofforeverfiction at 2016 Secret Shinigami Exchange on tumblr





	evenings

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve tried to make it as non sad as I can and without letting myself to get too rambly with it. There is a little darker notes at the first two paragraphs but it gets kinda lighter. B and A just kind of scream “angst” to me.

**Multiverse theory:**

 A theory that there is a hypothetical set of finite and infinite possible universes, including the universe in which we live.

There are versions of the story where A doesn’t die, there he doesn’t hang himself by their bedsheets leaving B to cut him down, where A runs away when he is seventeen and is too afraid to visit B in prison to see what he has done. There is a story where B does it himself, helps him tie the noose and sits there until the body goes cold, because A is too good for this world and he is too good to die all alone. There is a version where it’s B who passes and A lives out his life for him, he lives and he becomes the detective who destroys L, destroys him for everything because A isn’t B, A isn’t a boy who can explode and act out, his revenge is quiet and long term. No less destructive in the end.

But all those versions are with flaws because only one universe is unstable enough to contain them both alive. A universe full of quiet evenings and two boys who deserved way better than what they got in the end.

———

“Have you ever thought of running a way?” It’s summer evening outside and the cicadas are easily heard through the open window. “Just getting up and leaving?” There is a smell of freshly cut grass in the air and B should be doing his homework like A is, but instead he is fantasizing of cities and lands they  _might_  get to visit if only they get through this.

“You know they won’t let us, B, you know the security of this place.” Before the younger boy can respond with a huff however, A turns. “But I have entertained the idea and it sounds nice enough.”

B beams up at him because that’s all that he needs, because that sets a new goal, to get A out. That summer evening conversation might as well have been the beginning of his downfall, as many evenings that would follow in this house that never quite settled right in their hearts.

B has his obsessions, all of the Alphabet children do, he isn’t sure if it’s a B thing or Beyond Birthday thing, he isn’t sure if there is anything of his left in him. Everything has been long tainted and cracked to be glued back together by the program. First it was reading, anything and everything that he could find, then it was art, scribbling out shapes and figures on scrap piece of paper and corners of walls. And then it was A. It was making him happy and safe and healthy and protecting him from the rest of the world. Maybe  _that_  was his true downfall, obsessing over people never ends well, people aren’t objects or hobbies, people have their own desires and opinions, they can leave.

“Remember I asked you if you thought of leaving this place?” It’s October, the window is shut and they both are in a heap of blankets over a book. They read this one before, maybe more than twice already, doesn’t stop them from rereading it over and over again.

“Why are you talking about that again?”

“I have a way to get out of here, do you want to try?”

“Is that what you were doing for the past two weeks? B!” The book is forgotten in a second as A sits up. “Who knows what kind of trouble you could’ve gotten into if you got caught?”

“But I didn’t! Let’s go, please?” If there is one thing that B has learned at Wammy House than that’s how to be convincing, a valuable skill when you are living with such a stubborn stick-to-the-rules roommate. There is a reason A is first in the ranks and it’s definitely not because B sticks to the rules. “It will be fun, no one has to know since we’ll be back by the morning check.”

They leave quarter past nine, it’s already dark outside and A complains of the cold on the way to the town. Later he’ll look back at it and call it the best night of their childhood to which B will lazily agree to from the couch hunched over even more books and paper.

There is an evening where it almost doesn’t happen, and evening where A, just turned seventeen is laying on the ground and B swears on his own life that he will not allow A to leave him like that. B is just fifteen and this is not something a child should handle, but his obsessions are close and dear and he almost destroys himself and A because of it. Later in the infirmary he doesn’t sleep for three days, passing out only a few hours before A wakes up.

They leave next summer when A turns 18, they leave at night and no one sees them go, just like that Halloween night when they first snuck out of the house. They hide in London, Vienna, Paris, Moscow, anywhere just so they aren’t dragged back. B is Beyond now and A is Artemis, and Beyond couldn’t be happier even if he tried. L stops his search after two years, they cross the Atlantic just to get as far away from their past as possible and for the first time in his life Beyond finds a  _home._ A small flat where Artemis cooks breakfast in the morning and they read books under their own covers, where Beyond brings home a stray cat one evening and where they finally can settle down in this unstable universe; far away from bedsheets on the fan, gasoline and fire, bodies and prison bars.


End file.
